The immediate objectives of this collaborative, interdisciplinary project by a physician and an analytic philosopher are: (i) to develop an important, neglected area of professional and medical ethics; (ii) to demonstrate the ethical force of the cultural category of gender in psychiatric practice; and (iii) to apply a character oriented ethical framework to psychiatric practice, acknowledging the current context which includes managed care medicine together with an increasing emphasis on "consumer," "patient," or user of mental health services. The resultant publication, a comprehensive, gender-informed, consumer-oriented ethics for psychiatry in the age of managed care, construed within a virtue ethics framework and methodology, will be a significant scholarly contribution as well as a guide to ethical practice in psychiatry.